Among the Missing by Morag Joss Read Free Book Online

we got the car, I could work every night. There’s loads of cabs in Inverness without licenses, they never check. I’d work the airport, clubs.
    We were silent for a while, imagining it.
    The weekends, guys coming off the rigs, they drink hard, they always need cabs. It’s good money. You could stay with Anna instead of working for that cow.
    Oh, Vi’s all right. When she’s sober.
    Your voice was very quiet, as it was when you were either really angry or lost in a dream. I knew it very well, the way you withdrew into yourself. You had begun to shrink a little, rubbing your face and sighing as though the rage in your brain was rising from the surface of your skin like a sort of dangerous, flammable vapor that had to be wiped away and expelled in slow, careful gusts. I took your hand and started to say something. I didn’t think you were really listening, so I stopped speaking, but you didn’t snatch your hand away. We sat likethat in silence for a long time, moving only to put more wood on the fire. From time to time you looked at me as if you wanted to speak.
    Suddenly you sat up very straight. Sssh, you said, and you stared through the darkness toward the river, cupping your free hand to your ear. Listen!
    What? I squeezed your fingers tight. What is it? What’s wrong?
    My heart started to bump. We’d heard about them, homeless vagrants wandering out from the shelters they’d made under the bridge, high on drugs, in gangs. We were at least a mile away, and there was no easy way along the riverbank, but it had happened a couple of times about three years ago, a couple of old caravans in a field near the service station had been set on fire. That was why you wouldn’t leave Anna and me alone at night last summer. You’d stayed on working in the bar, refused when they offered you the night porter job. If anyone found the track down from the road, we’d be okay, you always said, because you’d be there. We’d hear anyone in plenty of time to get away and hide. They wouldn’t know the riverbank as we did, and they’d be too stoned to think of staying quiet. We’d be okay.
    But what if you were wrong? What if they’d been watching for hours from the darkness beyond the fire? I clutched at you. I was trying not to scream.
    Stefan! Somebody’s there! Get Anna! Oh, God, Stefan, get Anna!
    No, no, just listen. Anna’s fine. Listen to the geese, Silva, you whispered. Can you hear them? The geese?
    I listened hard, waiting for any sound, the slightest sound, coming off the water. My eyes were watering from the smoke. All I could hear was the sounds of the fire and the traffic on the bridge.
    The geese? No. I can’t hear anything.
    Well now, you said in my ear, pulling me closer to you. Well now … That’ll be because they’re all fast asleep. As you should be, silly girl.
    I pushed away from you, bashing at your shoulders, and you grabbed my hands and kissed them and started gnawing on my fingers, growling and mumbling. Just then there was a wail from the trailer. You looked round, but I got up instantly, pulling the blanket with me.
    I’ll go. Don’t stay out long.
    I left you poking a long branch into the fire. I was glad Anna had woken up, and to the sound of laughter. In a moment you’d come into the trailer to see that she was settling again, and the sight of her, asleepor not, would be almost the last stage of your restoration to yourself, and to me. At such moments I would often see tears on your face. That night, your love for her flooded your eyes.
    The very last stage came later, after she was asleep again. It came like this. In the way I might casually happen to be first to reach a door and open it for both of us, I told you that I was sorry. It didn’t matter to me at all that I didn’t believe anything I’d said was untrue or that I didn’t think I had anything to apologize for. The assumption of blame wasn’t important, that wasn’t the purpose of it. It was a way of saying I knew that